Russians Propose Plan to Save Earth

Anatoly Perminov, Russia's space agency chief, says Russia is considering a mission to knock the asteroid Apophis off course from a possible collision with the Earth. It works in the movies, but in real life, many questions remain.

If it sounds like a bad movie script, it once was.

According to David Adam, writing for Guardian.co.uk, Anatoly
Perminov, Russia's
space agency chief, told a radio station Dec. 30 that Russia
is considering mounting a space mission to divert the asteroid Apophis from a
possible collision with the Earth. Perminov said NASA, the European Space
Agency and organizations of other spacefaring nations would be invited to
participate in the rescue mission.

"The Apophis asteroid is approximately the size of two-and-a-half football
fields," NASA said in an Oct. 7 news release. Apophis first made headlines
in 2004 when scientists announced there was a 1-in-37 chance that the massive
rock would collide with Earth in 2029, according to Adam. Further research
recalibrated the collision path and NASA now puts it a 1-in-250,000 chance that
the asteroid could strike Earth in 2036.

"People's lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million
dollars and build a system that would allow us to prevent a collision, rather
than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of
people," Perminov told the Russian radio station Golos Rossii, Adam said.

According to NASA, an Apophis collision with Earth "would release more
than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima.
Thousands of square miles would be directly affected" and the lingering
effects could affect the Earth atmosphere for years, Adam continued.

How to divert asteroids from hitting Earth has long been a subject of
speculation by scientists and a fertile field for Hollywood
scenarios. The films "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" were
both built on the premise of a dangerous mission to save the Earth from a
looming asteroid collision.

In real life, scientists have debated the most effective way to throw an
asteroid off course, including sending a spacecraft to nudge the asteroid to a
different course. Sending a nuclear missile to blow up the asteroid has also
been considered.

"Calculations show that it's possible to create a special-purpose
spacecraft within the time we have, which would help avoid the collision. The
threat of collision can be averted," Adam quoted Perminov as saying.
"We will soon hold a closed meeting of our collegium, the
science-technical council, to look at what can be done. There won't be any
nuclear explosions. Everything will be done according to the laws of
physics."